Need Help Trouble Shooting

A few months ago the monitor on my home computer began to shut down at random. I swaped out the monitor with one from work and found that the monitor is not the problem. Could it be the graphics card? If so how hard are they to change out. The computer is a HP running Windows XP and about 5 years old.

Thanks
CM

Video Cards are rather easy to replace, and yes they do go out. More than likely, unless you installed one you have been running off the motherboard graphics card. Which, in most cases, is not a very good card.

You will need to know a few things about your motherboard before you can buy one. Shut down the tower and unplug the power cable. Open the side (there should be two screws in the back that release the side panel) and then try and see if you can figure out the model number of your motherboard. If you have your owner's manual, that would be best. You will need to know what type of slot(s) you have available. If you get the wrong one, it won't plug in. When I got mine I just took my owner's manual for the motherboard to the tech store and the guy showed me exactly which one I needed. If you can't find the model number of the motherboard or the owner's manual, you should bring the tower to the tech store and ask them 'which video card do I need'. They will be able to look at the motherboard and tell you exactly which one will fit in your tower.

Also, have you upgraded your RAM at all. Large graphics eat up a lot of memory and maybe your pc doesn't have enough RAM to process these images without conflict. With the XP OS I would run no less that 3 GB of RAM if your motherboard will allow it. You can go as high as 4 GB with XP, but it will only recognize 3.25 GB. If you only have two RAM slots, I would personally get two 2 GB cards, but that's me. You will also need information on your motherboard to know which speed of RAM is most compatible with your motherboard.

From there, it is very simple. You insert the VC in the slot, screw it into place on the back of the tower, put the side panel back on, move your monitor cable to the new VC, power up the tower. I recommend you install the drivers from the CD and immediately do a driver update. The CD that comes with the VC may not have the most up to date drivers. After that, go to microsoft updates and see if XP needs any updates for the new VC drivers. After that, you should be good to go.

Thanks!
That hepls alot.

When was the last time you opened up that computer and cleaned the dust out? I'd start there!

After that it could any number of possibilities, a corrupt driver, bad hardware. I'd check the driver first before buying a new card. At this point I would think long and hard about replacing anything in that PC. 5 years is a long time in the PC world. Sinking money into that machine may not be wise.

Something to think about!

Run a utility to keep track of CPU temperatures.

All good suggestions... I always start with a good cleaning with compresssed air. You should gently hold any cooling fans from spinning while hitting them with canned air.

And... do you even HAVE an actual video card or does your PC have on board graphics?

Opened it up last night and yes it was FULL of dust. After I cleaned it out it ran good for about an hour then the monitor shut off again. I got it back up and it ran good for the rest of the night. And no I dont think it has a card.

I'd first open the bad-boy up, pull the card, do a thorough cleaning with compressed air....then re-seat the card!

Video cards can go bad....but in my experience, motherboards go bad about 10-to-1 times faster! That's why I wouldn't replace the card first. There are plenty of other things that could be wrong (including a defective board). In fact, I'd almost bet the farm that, IF you have a hardware problem that it's the board over the card....at least in my experience.

CABINET MAN wrote in post #10498151
Opened it up last night and yes it was FULL of dust. After I cleaned it out it ran good for about an hour then the monitor shut off again. I got it back up and it ran good for the rest of the night. And no I dont think it has a card.

You can tell if it has a card by where you plug the monitor into the computer. Is the cord plugged in where all the other connectors are, like USB, keyboard, mouse and LAN? Or does it plug in below that all by itself? If it is at the top with all the other stuff it has built in graphics so there is no card. If it is on the bottom all alone then it has a card and you should pull it out and re-seat it like Matt said above.

My guess is that it has built in graphics.

All great advice in here. Hopefully it stays running good now. If the video card does go bad, the nice thing is that newer cards are lightspeeds faster and super cheap. Just replaced my 6 year old card. As mentioned above be sure that all other components are compatable, including your power supply. Very very easy to install a video card.

BeritOlam wrote in post #10498187
I'd first open the bad-boy up, pull the card, do a thorough cleaning with compressed air....then re-seat the card!

Video cards can go bad....but in my experience, motherboards go bad about 10-to-1 times faster! That's why I wouldn't replace the card first. There are plenty of other things that could be wrong (including a defective board). In fact, I'd almost bet the farm that, IF you have a hardware problem that it's the board over the card....at least in my experience.

That's assuming he even has a VC. I would bet he plugged into the MB's built in video. Like you said, the MB is more likely to fail than a VC, but if he doesn't even have a VC, then getting one could fix his problem. If it doesn't, he can easily take it back and then start working towards a new computer.

CABINET MAN wrote in post #10498151
Opened it up last night and yes it was FULL of dust. After I cleaned it out it ran good for about an hour then the monitor shut off again. I got it back up and it ran good for the rest of the night. And no I dont think it has a card.

Just a quick question...is it just your monitor that is shutting off, or is your whole computer shuttign down? I can't help but wonder if maybe your power supply isn't going bad. I had a power supply with a faulty ground and it would cause my monitor to just go blank. I got a new VC, no change. Then, I realized that the tower itself was shutting down too. Turned out I had a faulty power supply.

At this point, it might be worth a call to Geek Squad and have them test the hardware. They will do a very thorough test on all your hardware and give you a report. That might be the most direct path to a solution.

If the computer itself is shutting down then you need to turn on error reporting and take note of the error code it generates when it Blue Screens.

This will lead you very quickly to exactly what the problem is.

Moppie wrote in post #10503820
If the computer itself is shutting down then you need to turn on error reporting and take note of the error code it generates when it Blue Screens.

This will lead you very quickly to exactly what the problem is.

Only problem is, it won't Blue Screen if it's the power supply. That was my problem, the whole system would just shut down, sometimes auto reboot, but no error reports. Once the power supply was replaced, problem solved.

Of course, that is just a shot in the dark. I originally thought it was a bad video card. It sounds more like the on board video card has gone bad. I've never been a fan of on board video cards because they aren't as well built, IMO.

TGrundvig wrote in post #10505057
Only problem is, it won't Blue Screen if it's the power supply. That was my problem, the whole system would just shut down, sometimes auto reboot, but no error reports. Once the power supply was replaced, problem solved.

Of course, that is just a shot in the dark. I originally thought it was a bad video card. It sounds more like the on board video card has gone bad. I've never been a fan of on board video cards because they aren't as well built, IMO.

I've had a similar problem where my work computer started out with these strange lines on the display. After a couple of days it would just shut down, then reboot. Only happened when the computer was "cold". Once it had been running for an hour or so it was fine. Tried the PSU, video card, reseated the memory, ran diagnostic tools on the HDD and Memtest86, reinstalled the OS, cleared the CMOS and replaced the battery. Turns out a memory stick was bad, but Memtest didn't show any problems due to the fact that the only time I could run it was once the computer warmed up and by that point the memory was "working". Finally got a BSOD that lead me to try and run each stick of memory by itself. First stick worked fine for a week, second stick gave me issues right away. Picked up a new stick and no problems since.